Sparking memories of childhood...

Rating: 8/10 (18 July 2013)

Pacific Rim is meant to pay homage to those who grew up around the time of "the other" ToHo films and ToHo type films entering the market like what Del Toro saw while growing up. It's been decades since these movies got the big screen treatment, and this is a nice re-entry piece decades later that I hope gives the green-light to others as well.
What's the story? Well, the story is simpler than most, but this is not a film presented to complicate your mind. It's easy to get, the characters are easy to understand. You'll get the feeling that the filmmakers are give homage to those 'kaiju' films before it, the plot, humorous scientists, those who want to make a buck off of tragedy and monsters. The 'kaiju' were all that one expects them to be: huge, menacing, loud and armed with a few surprises. And so are the man piloted robots.
The robots aren't Power Rangers or even Transformers. These Robots, called Jaegers in this film, do not transform into anything. They cannot hide or blend into the scenery. The Jaegers in this film don't throw karate kicks. The Jaegers do not give any moral messages or speeches. They too are big and loud, piloted by humans and are just battle equipment. They are "fighting machines" against the kaiju coming up from the pacific rim.
This is one of those rare films were it doesn't posses your typical movie tack-ons to lure one in (i.e., a star name, a love story, teens, etc.), and that may be one of the film's major downfalls. Audiences may be so used to this so that when its missing, they may think the film is a failure. Not necessarily. It's monsters vs. robots. The only thing I would have liked to have seen are more of the international robots & pilots and their stories, as some were mentioned but had too little screen time for my tastes.
Pacific Rim is what the old 'popcorn' movie is all about. It's monsters-from-the-deep matinée genre. It is fun, nice action fight scenes with nods to the models and scales of those old 60s films, and man within robots to save the Earth from getting taken over.